Lytro is a camera that allows you to change the focus AFTER you take a picture. Of course it is actually taking a series of images for each photograph you make. To see the Lytro in action you must post the images in their online gallery. Here are my first attempts at making use of the focus feature. Both photos were taken overlooking Lake Pepin from Lake City MN.

I should point out that I have a friend who likes to say (given all my photo toys) "You have WAY too much fun!" But than again he is in part responsible. He had an extra Lytro and gave it to me. He is right, but I would instead say "Photographers have WAY too much fun."

The Wonders of Photography. A new digital book on photography by Dennis Curtin.

Monday, October 28, 2013, 08:37 PM

Dennis Curtin, who has written a number of well known photography textbooks, moved to digital publications a few years ago. His books are chocked full of great information and images. His new photography book The Wonders of Photography features a page devoted to my work.

Dennis is a great guy and a really good writer on all aspects of photography. I am thrilled to be a part of his newest book. It is a great resource for anyone looking at learning more about their camera, the history of the medium, and some of the ideas and directions that today's photographers are now pursuing.

This past summer photographer Mike Zerby and I team taught a photo journalism class for the University of Minnesota in Red Wing Minnesota. We brought nine students down to spend the week photographing. We returned to campus where the students made individual iBooks for iPad and worked on the print magazine. The print and pdf version of the class magazine is now available on MagCloud. The 80 page magazine is $20.00. The pdf version is free.

In 1973 during one of my regular visits to New York I spent the better part of a cold rainy day photographing the Flatiron building in Manhattan. I shot a number of rolls of 35mm film of this wonderful building from all angles and perspectives. I was interested in creating pairs of images where the final image would emerge from the viewing of two side by side photographs.

I was just finishing grad school and was rebelling against my pictorial and non-silver (Gum Bichromate) work of the previous two years. I was looking for something more conceptual. Conceptual Art was all the rage that year and I wanted to be part of it.

In the end four pairs worked on the level I was looking for, but also seemed to be involved with an unconscious dialog with four earlier photographers. It wasn't that they looked like the images, it was more the spirit of the photographers. One pair I titled Flat Iron For Alfred Stieglitz not because it looked like his photograph of the same structure, but because it had a gritty urban rising mist like his 1892 image The Terminal. I loved the mysterious figure crossing the street, as mysterious as Stieglitz himself.

Along with Stieglitz's work, their were other Flat Iron images for Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn and Berenice Abbott. The four pairs were part of my MFA thesis exhibit at the Martin Gallery in Minneapolis that spring. All were printed on Kodalith paper, a paper made for high contrast images for the print industry. Processed with a few tricks (which I have long forgotten), the images came out a cold brown color with some midtones as well as deep shadows. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts bought four pairs out of the show including the Stieglitz homage. Eventually they were posted on their website as well as a couple of other MIA sanctioned sites.

Fast forward 40 years and I find that the image has now been reproduced over 500 times on the Web. It can be found in collections on Flikr, Tumblr, Pinterest and on numerous blogs, art history sites and New York sites. It has taken on a life of its own and I find it all a bit strange. So here is the rest of the story on that image. May it continue to multiple and prosper.